AMS 2: New Game Footage - Plenty of News in July Roadmap

[Paul Jeffrey]

Reiza Studios have been teasing exciting sim racing news once again... with a nice comparison video thrown into the mix for good measure!

Anyone here ever heard of Automobilista 2? Yeah, I thought you might...

I did something I never really do yesterday, I announced an announcement for an upcoming announcement. Sounds silly doesn't it? Well to be honest with you, I was just so excited about the prospect of more AMS 2 news, I really, really wanted to put a little flag in the sand of the internet and give us all somewhere to go roast the marshmallows for a while and pass the time until said announcement wanders into the wild.

Well that time is now, so I'll step aside and hand over to Reiza Studios to share the latest happenings over in Brazil...

………………….

Hello everyone! We are back with another Dev Update to bring you the latest news about our active projects.

This has been another very busy month for the team, and possibly (hopefully!) the last in which we have worked in 3 different sims simultaneously (AMS1, rF2 & AMS2). It´s fair to say switching back and forth from engines doesn´t make things easy for the devs who are involved in all these fronts, so kudos to them for continuing to push hard in order to bring us up to the status I can now present to you

On rF2 there´s not much news yet as we´re still working on small update for the Bundle to fix a few remaining issues. This should not take long now.

For AMS1, we also didn´t quite make to release before the end of July as we had been aiming for, but August will surely see the release of Snetterton and Donington Park as final DLC items for Automobilista 1, along with a small patch for a few tweaks and minor bug fixes.

Both Snetterton and Donington have been modelled with the aid of LIDAR data and are along with the previously released brit tracks some of our most accurate models.

Here´s a preview of Snetterton in AMS1:

The main focus remain of course in Automobilista 2 and things continue to come along strongly there too, with a bunch of fresh cars and tracks being brought up to spec for the new engine as you´ll see peppered through this Dev Update

AMS1 vs AMS2 - Ultima GTR @ Snetterton Comparison

We found ourselves in an unusual position the last couple of months as we developed the same content both for the old title (AMS1) and the new one (AMS2) at the same time, as both Snetterton and Donington Park are being released as DLC for AMS1 and will be part of the base game in AMS2. It made for some interesting back and forth, and we thought it was worth putting together a comparison video. Check it out:

Opinions may and will vary as they always do and obviously nothing from the AMS2 video is quite the finished article yet, but in any case we found it made for an interesting comparison. From a devs POV we left the experiment feeling both reassured that the old dog AMS1 was well put together and is still holding up, at the same time with confidence that AMS2 moves every front up a notch or three in the right direction and with lots of room for improvement still.

The most improved part is actually the physics as this is one of the cars that drive substantially better in AMS2, although you can´t see that in the video

It will take a few months still until you all can compare for yourselves but at least there will be some fresh AMS1 content to race with in this time!

Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit coming in AMS2!

We are happy to be wrapping up a licensing deal with the historical Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit which will see the track featuring in multiple versions from its rich history as base game content in Automobilista 2.

The recently upgraded Kyalami is located in Johannesburg SA, it has hosted the South African Grand Prix several times from the 60s all the way to the 90s, and as a Grade 2 FIA certified track it is currently one of the few viable options for a future return of F1 to the african continent.

Kyalami will feature in Automobilista 2 release with its latest revision along with the sweeping, high speed historical 1976 version, with the 1992 version to be added post-release.

This is an exciting deal for us as not only it highlights our goals of expanding the horizons for Automobilista 2, but also from a sim perspective it adds an interesting challenge as the track is located over 1500m above sea level. In AMS1 we unfortunately didn´t get around to completing our thermodynamic model, but with AMS2 we luckily have that out of the box as part of the Madness engine so when racing in Kyalami players will have to contend with the extra challenge of a high altitude location and the resulting significant toll in engine and aerodynamic performance.

Sprint Race also coming in AMS2

Sprint Race is a new Brazilian series which we are excited to officially include in Automobilista 2.

Managed by ex driver Thiago Marques, the series offers a low budget entry point for new drivers and has remained a healthy popular series for several years now. It has recently made its first venture abroad for races in the USA.

Powered by a 260HP V6 engine with RWD, sequential 6-speed shifter and with a central driving position, this car serves as an excellent training tool for several types of racing and should be a perfect option for door-to-door action.

A reminder that you can already pre-order Automobilista 2 through the AMS2 Early Backing Campaign. We´d like to thank everyone who already bought in, the extra revenue stream is most helpful and it´s being put to good use with some fresh licenses already secured and others already lined up. More information on this program and how to participate here.

If you are looking forward to Automobilista 2 but would rather wait for release, you may opt instead to add the game to your Steam wishlist via the AMS2 Steam Store page - Steam will then let you know as soon as it´s released.

We got some more exciting news coming up but these we have to save for next month. Look forward to catching up again then, possibly a little earlier than usual

Well folks, take a breath, have a relax and go enjoy that video again!

Automobilista 2 will release for PC December 2019.

For the latest Automobilista 2 news and discussions, head over to the AMS 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment and get yourself involved in the conversation today!

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[Case_]

(The amount of hate simracing community has for anything even remotely PCars related never ceases to amaze me.)

 

[Stephen O'Sullivan]

 

[Kurupt CDN]

Looking forward to playing this during the Christmas holidays!

Thanks to Paul and Reiza for the video and info

 

[Andy_J]

I will reserve my judgement to when it's released and reviewed. But this latest video has not filled me with a "omg, I need it" sense. I love AMS and will be quite happy to remain with it if this is too much like Bells creation.

 

[kamtcho]

I have one question. Will be in AMS2 so geat tail breaking implemented like is in AMS?
AMS learned it me to be able do it in real live car and bike.

 

[Marcos Santi]

Great job Reiza, Austomobilista 2 will be the best simracing no doubt.
Renato Please consider add Zandvoort and Spa 60s and more US tracks.. and Australian too

 

[TylerDurden4321]

My worry here - and I already bought into AMS2, I'm gonna support Reiza no matter what - ...my worry is that if the AMS2 sound seemingly will be as lo-fi as the pCARS2 sound, will the FFB then also be as lo-fi?

I think what would help to convince people (and what Reiza should do) is show us a high-resolution FFB-signal graph comparison for a) corner on a bumpy track and another one for b) driving over a curb with the outside wheels.

 

[Mike Kadlcak]

This looks so real ! What sim is this, I would play it

you would have to grow balls for this kind of a sim.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

I’m sorry but I just can’t come to any other conclusion. This literally screams “Project Cars 2” and I wouldn’t have been able to differentiate between the two.

If we were given videos of all different sim engines running on the same graphics, I bet even most pro sim racers wouldn't be able to tell which sim physics is which. Heck, it's getting difficult to judge which sim has the most realistic physics even when you drive it, let alone from a YT video. We should also keep in mind that the physical and graphical position of the car at time x isn't identical. You can actually have a rather large discrepancy in the physics behaviour compared to how it gets translated to graphics. Which all means judging by a video is near pointless.

Finally, we should at least have a lap where the driver is pushing to make any judgement of how the car behaves on the limit. Off the limit is simple as every sim is more or less the same, but approaching the limit and going over it is where you see tiny differences across different sims. We saw none of it in this video because especially the AMS2 lap was cruising.

 

[Miguel Batista]

It is incredible how alergic this community is to anything project cars related. Pcars 2 physics engine is fine as is. FFB too. The raw present is pretty good thought it lacked something and Christaan' s ffb just made it as good as any other SIM this side of rFactor 2. There is one car that I actually think feels better in pcars 2 than rFactor 2 (LMP2) then Reiza posts a video of a car that behaves closer to the real car than AMS1 (they do have actual input from the real thing and some of them have actually driven it), the developer actually explains again that the car is actually closer to the real thing due to a better engine, and people still come here and claim to have better knowledge than the devs! It's like, we get you don't like pcars2. Do you really need to go EVERYWHERE say you don't like project cars?

 

[Fanis]

I think it is awesome, that the head of the developer is reading this discussion and even replying to some comments. With this in mind I would like to say, that I am looking forward to AMS 2 very much and will definitely buy it. I wish Reiza good luck with all they current and future projects

 

[Arconian]

I have one question. Will be in AMS2 so geat tail breaking implemented like is in AMS?
AMS learned it me to be able do it in real live car and bike.

I always thought trailbraking is something that you implement by your inputs on pedals and steering wheel.
There will be weight transfer simulation for sure.

 

[M D Gourley]

Reiza are getting a pretty hard time here!
I have the utmost faith that they will do a great job and give us something that is better than any of the current offerings on the market, all of which have their flaws.
They have taken the best looking sim with the best weather system (PCars 2) and will be marrying it to their excellent FFB/audio/physics knowhow.
There are many months of development left, and knowing Reiza they'll continue to improve, add features and bug fix well after 1.0. Why write them off already?

Well said, and agree 100%....Reiza have done a fantastic job using the rFactor 1 engine, massaging every ounce of performance / visuals / FFB etc out of it and virtually making it their own, so based on that I would be very optimistic and say that they could tweak the Madness Engine and make their own variation of that as well....on the road to finding the perfect engine and AMS3 may be a different engine altogether...who knows, in the future Reiza may end up developing their own engine.
...and as a backer I get AMS2 for free...and see it already sitting in my Steam account just waiting to push 'PLAY' when it all arrives....oh happy days.

 

[azaralamouri]

Written as clear as day under the video:
".. and obviously nothing from the AMS2 video is quite the finished article yet,..."

Come on dude.
This answer is over used.. I so anticipated it that I delibrately wrote "Good luck in the future in taking this to the next level and become better and better.". I repeat it if you didn#t read it.

But this time I will add: During my 2 years since I started gaming/simracing I've seen this answer being repeated twise: Once in DR2 early footage where it looked soft and not real and the other time in the early footage of FIA European Truck Racing Championship which looked so lego gamy and not real. Guess what? Both NEVER improved.

 

[kamtcho]

This is only sim i feel it almost same as in real car.

I always thought trailbraking is something that you implement by your inputs on pedals and steering wheel.
There will be weight transfer simulation for sure.

 

[Copef1]

Im not one to say you cant judge car behaviour based on videos - theres a lot a trained eye can tell. If you could explain where is this floatiness you refer to and how youre gauging it it might lend more value to the criticism though.

Facts are, the car has the same chassis, aero, suspension geometry, suspension rates, torque curves and brakes as the AMS1 version, 1:1. The tyres themselves are less stiff which accounts for some of the bounciness and bit more forgiving behaviour. But it has less lateral slip than the AMS1 version specially at higher loads, and feels more connected as a result. Thats not a guess

One can still not like what he sees of course, but Id say youre jumping to conclusions too soon there

Your trying to explain facts to the crazy. There are people in this community that decided the day they heard that you were using the Madness engine, that they were going to hate it. Don't bother with them, they won't like it even if you turn out the best simulator known to man. I can guarantee you that the day you release it, no matter how good, or bad, it is, your going to hear a bunch of lunatics regurgitating things like "floaty", "center pole physics", "Pcars2 ffb", "Pcars2 sound", "Ian Bell bad!!!!". Don't worry, they are vocal, but they are a minority.

 

[Spinelli]

So if you think that's "floaty", i wonder what you will think of this video:

That doesn't look floaty nor anything like the physics in most sims. That car looks connected while also sliding around at times. There's a sense of mass being pressed into the ground and the car doesn't almost do a slidey-hover behaviour like you can so often do in sims (especially certain physics engines).

 

[Richard Wilks]

That doesn't look floaty nor anything like the physics in most sims. That car looks connected while also sliding around at times. There's a sense of mass being pressed into the ground and the car doesn't almost do a slidey-hover behaviour like you can so often do in sims (especially certain physics engines).

I know all about what you mean, and i am sure it can be felt in most of the stuff i did, despite being in an ISI engine.

 

[Spinelli]

My first post a couple pages back focused on physics (and mostly AMS1)...besides physics and my optimism of improved physics in AMS2, I have to say, I'm disappointed by the sounds. I was expecting much more dynamics and "physics-to-audio" connection (as someone previously mentioned) especially considering that PC2 uses a more capable audio engine however it literally sounded like someone recorded an engine sound into an mp3 file and the game is just playing that same, single sound according to rpm (pitch) and throttle load (volume). There are so many things that create and influence sound in a vehicle.

Having said that, in Reiza's AMS2 announcement video a good few months back, there is trackside audio playing in the background and the sounds sounded way more realistic and life-like. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded - really put a smile to my face I'm assuming those were purely in-game sounds...I don't think the audio will be a problem, especially in-car sounds..honestly. Even if the audio-engine wasn't better, which it is, there's a lot you can do to manipulate sound purely via sound samples (especially for in-car sound). I honestly have no worries about AMS2 and sounds.

Graphics wise, well the AMS1 car/track/world in the chase-cam looks sharp while the AMS2 car/track/world has that typical modern-day videogame softened / smudged look. I hope that's a setting we can disable because it looks too "artistic" rather than raw and realistic.

 

[bmanic]

It is incredible how alergic this community is to anything project cars related. Pcars 2 physics engine is fine as is. FFB too. The raw present is pretty good thought it lacked something and Christaan' s ffb just made it as good as any other SIM this side of rFactor 2. There is one car that I actually think feels better in pcars 2 than rFactor 2 (LMP2) then Reiza posts a video of a car that behaves closer to the real car than AMS1 (they do have actual input from the real thing and some of them have actually driven it), the developer actually explains again that the car is actually closer to the real thing due to a better engine, and people still come here and claim to have better knowledge than the devs! It's like, we get you don't like pcars2. Do you really need to go EVERYWHERE say you don't like project cars?

.. welcome to the "Lets bash anything SMS touched!" forum. There's a looooong history why this is the case. Has nothing to do with the actual quality of the sim.

Also, I always find it funny how many bash the physics yet you still see so many of those same people having a great time playing it on streams with GamerMuscle. Go figure..

Still, pC2 _is_ very uneven in the quality department (not at all unique to just pC2, mind you.. look at Assetto Corsa.. or any other sim. iRacing has tons of cars that drive absolutely horrendously and require completely unrealistic setups to lay down fast times). pC2 has tons of annoying small and big bugs. Badly implemented multiplayer (oh it could have been sooooo good! ). The whole package had such massive potential that was never fully realized so part of the frustration is very understandable.

And this is where AMS2 comes to the rescue! Reiza are meticulous when it comes to attention to detail. They are also very much known for NOT stopping the development once the first version has been released. They iterate and improve very thoroughly. I feel like some of you guys don't remember where it all started (GSC) and how amazingly good AMS got over a long period of time. It was iterated upon over and over again.. thus it is so friggin good right now. I'm certain AMS2 will have the same good development cycle and we'll end up with an amazing sim!